


Z is for Zevran

by OtakuElf



Series: YADAA (Yet Another Dragon Age Alphabet) [26]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Darkspawn, Death, Deep Roads, Gen, Grey Warden Secrets, The Blight (Dragon Age), The Calling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-14 13:18:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8015506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtakuElf/pseuds/OtakuElf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The end comes to us all.  But how much more cruel is the fate of the Grey Wardens?</p><p>And for those who love them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Z is for Zevran

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, Lunamoth116 for her great patience and assistance.
> 
> Just a heads up, but I've done some work on this.

Zevran Arainai, Master of the Scouts of Ferelden, former Crow assassin, felt the cold, solid stone of the cavern wall against his sweating back. What was it the dwarves swore? “By the stone”? Well, by the stone, and by Andraste’s fiery breasts, Zevran was bone-tired. Carving a line through the darkspawn -- mostly hurlocks traveling with an ogre -- in the eerily torch-lit tunnels of the Deep Roads, they’d survived for far longer than he’d expected.

The air was still, unlike the breezes of the world above, but hair gone white over the years slipped out of his braids and crawled spider-like across the Antivan’s face, obscuring twining tattoos. Tired muscles ached as he reached to gather up and pull the thinning hair back, out of the way.

“My friend?” The elvhen looked across the passageway to where his Grey Warden companion Alistair leaned back as well, head tilted up, black patches of the taint bleeding through skin on that well-loved face. “How are you feeling, Alistair?” The sound of worry in his voice was loathsome. One should be able to maintain dignity at their age.

“Tired. And I’d give anything to shut off the noise in my head, Zev,” his king and longest-held friend -- after Theron Mahariel -- answered, before exhaling long and loud. “We can’t stay here, though. If we sleep here, we’ll have darkspawn on us before we know it. I can feel them all around. They’ll slit our throats in the darkness. Time to find our way back to camp.”

“Do you think Theron will be there by now?” Zevran tried not to listen to the cracking of his knees as he stood up ruler-straight, stretching carefully to make certain that his next attack did not end in a torn muscle.

“Possibly.” Alistair’s calloused fingertips grazed the knobby roof of the passage as the well-muscled fighter stretched as well. “I don’t know which I feel more. The desire to see Theron? To take this last journey with him? Or the wish that he would be spared this? The Calling.” Rubbing at the marks he knew were growing on his face, the once fair-haired Grey Warden grimaced. “They’re growing, aren’t they? Soon I’ll be one big black mark.”

“Possibly,” Zevran echoed. “You are still quite a handsome man, Alistair. Though only the female dwarves in the Legion of the Dead are here to see it.”

That got a laugh. More of a snort, but still, a laugh. “Only the Broodmothers down here today,” Alistair reminded him, “and I’d prefer not to have them at all attracted to me.”

“That does make the situation difficult,” Zevran commented, overly serious, “to have a monstrous darkspawn mooning over you when you are sworn to kill her and all of her brood.”

An enormous yawn cracked Alistair’s jaw. “Let’s get back to camp. I’ll make us some of my famous lamb and pea stew!”

Zevran’s groan was heartfelt. “My friend. My very dear friend, I will be doing the cooking. I do not desire to be killed by your concoctions. Neither, I believe, will Theron.”

Alistair shrugged. “Your loss. Though I do think we’re out of lamb. So we’ll have to go with dried fish. That’s more your domain than mine,” he admitted.

Still broad-shouldered after all these years, Alistair was dressed in plate mail, carrying it easily in spite of his aches and pains. It was standard Grey Warden plate, blue under the darkspawn blood, and had been kept in good condition. King Alistair Theirin of Ferelden bent down to catch up his helm, running gauntleted fingers over the silken ribbon tied to the crest. The last favour his wife would ever give him. Anora had tied it tightly, herself, the morning Alistair and Zevran had slipped from the palace in Denerim. The only people to see them leave had been Anora and the children -- Zevran’s as well as the Theirins’. Zevran’s scouts, this troop entirely made up of his offspring, had been their escort as they rode to underground and echoing Orzammar to make the Grey Warden king’s last entry into the Deep Roads. It was to be an entry from which he would not return.

Zelwyn, Zevrin’s oldest son, was leading his siblings. It was rare to see him separated from Anora’s and Alistair’s eldest. The pair of them had been almost joined at the hip since baby Gareth had started crawling after the towheaded elvhen toddler. Gareth, a Senior Enchanter of the Amaranthine Circle of Magi and researcher on the history of magic, was staying at the palace in Denerim with his mother, brothers and sisters for now. It was not guaranteed that the siblings would remain at the palace with their mother, Queen Anora, until Zevran returned with news of their father’s death. It was not guaranteed that Zevran would survive to return.

Zev had an excellent memory, and could hear his (so far as he knew) firstborn’s voice telling him, “I will wait, Father, in Orzammar until you return. You should not have to make the journey home alone. Gareth...” Zel’s voice had broken. “Gareth offered to come too. I told him it was better to comfort his mother.” Zelwyn was a younger copy of Zevran as he might have been in a better life: without tattoos, slightly built with wiry muscles and white-blond hair, his voice a light tenor. His Fereldan accent came when he was relaxed. When he chose, though, the young elven assassin, trained by his father, could mimic many accents in the trade tongue, and speak most widely-used languages fluently. Traveling with Gareth had provided that opportunity, as well as an education in the Circle, for all that their family had no magic. Zevran was very proud of his son. He was proud of all of his children. At least the ones he knew about.

The possibility that Zelwyn would be making that journey alone was distressing. Zevran had not been able to dissuade the boy. He had, however, outright refused to allow his son to take part in this last adventure of Alistair’s Calling. The thought of any of his children becoming tainted was too much to bear. Zevran was tricky enough to avoid it himself. And if he did not? Well, then, that was the way the game would play out. Meanwhile, he and Alistair had been enormously careful.

They had met a number of other Grey Wardens here: Orlesians, Nevarran, Anders. No one dealing with their own Calling. After the calamity that was Corypheus, the order had fewer older members, and those sought their end in many of the newly opened Deep Roads closer to their garrisons. Weisshaupt was certainly still actively investigating darkspawn activity. They were even collecting specimens for experiments in the Free Circles of Ferelden. Mage healers were attempting to find a cure for the taint. This treatment would be for ordinary people, not Grey Wardens. There was no antidote for the poison flowing through the veins of the Grey Wardens. Each member of that military body was aware, had planned for this eventuality. This certainty. There had been that Grey Warden blood mage at Soldier’s Peak. It was a moment before Zevran could recall his name. Avernus. He had finally died, and Grey Warden mages had not been able to finish his work. Or not without taking the hideous risks, the monstrous tortures, that Avernus had taken. Theron had demanded restrictions on the blood mage’s experiments. Weisshaupt, in all its wisdom, had not been happy at what they called “blackmail by the Hero of Ferelden.”

There was a goodly amount of activity on the roads now. Theron and his people at Amaranthine had rediscovered Kal’Hirol. Kal-Sharok was in diplomatic discussions with both King Bhelen and a Fereldan embassy appointed by Anora. Not many dwarves joined the Grey Wardens. Zev had met Sigrun, the Grey Warden who had joined from the Legion of the Dead in Amaranthine. A cheerful woman. Joyful in bed. Her Calling had come long before Alistair’s, for all that she became a Grey Warden after he did. Theron had told them that she had given up a few years after their battle with the Architect. To be sure, they had been astounded at meeting an intelligent, speaking darkspawn. 

Zevran was thankful that Alistair had never given up. These past few years had been difficult for his friend. The king was still deeply in love with his wife, and grieved over leaving her and their children. The heir, Prince Duncan, had married for love with the approval of his parents. It was a match that would strengthen Anora’s reign, and later Duncan’s. Alistair had delayed leaving for the Calling until after the wedding, growing a beard to cover up the increasing blotches of the taint on his careworn face. 

Grieving began long ago for both Anora and Alistair. Zevran, of course, knew all the intimate details. Anora had long since stopped trying to keep things from him. Alistair, as a matter of course, confided in the former Crow. The Calling meant that a Grey Warden’s dreams were stronger, more vivid. The Warden could hear the darkspawn speaking to him. Even deep in the palace at Denerim, leagues from any darkspawn, Alistair could still hear them, was being drawn to the Deep Roads by the taint in his blood. He’d been afraid to touch Anora or any of his children as the dark patches on his skin had manifested and his eyes had filmed over, hiding his Fereldan blue irises. There had been cramping, which Alistair believed would be lessened as he moved closer to the main stream of the darkness. This had been partially true. It was widely known in Denerim that the king was no longer appearing to the public. Noble friends and common had attempted to visit, to see him. All had been turned away.

“It’s not my vanity, Zev,” Alistair had complained to his friend as they and Anora sat by the fire with glasses of Antivan brandy. “They’d see the taint and panic. There’s a reason why the Grey Wardens do not let the process of becoming one of them be widely known.”

Anora had sat curled up next to her love, separated from the king by woolen wraps -- he felt the cold more now -- and looking very young. The lines she wore on her face were mostly laugh lines put there by her husband. She had grey in her blonde hair, but twisted up into the traditional Fereldan braid, it was difficult to see. Anora was vain. She admitted it. That did not stop her from doing all she could for her husband in spite of the possibility of contagion. 

“Ah, Alistair. It is widely known that Anora and I are the ones who submit to vanity. Otherwise, you would not have had that ridiculous hairstyle all these years.” Zevran smirked at the pair of them from his fire-warmed seat on the hearth. He did not like to admit it, but the heat felt good on his muscles and in his bones.

“Maker knows I’ve tried, Zev,” sighed Anora. “That lovely red-gold hair. And he has never grown it out long enough for a proper braid.”

Now, in the small, cold cavern lit by torches and their campfire, Zevran could see Alistair run his fingers through the short cropped hair. Some of it came out on his fingers; he’d been losing it for some time, but still always seemed to have enough to cover his scalp. Zevran tried to imagine a bald Alistair. No. It was impossible. Still, he could see black patches through the hair. The beard had been shaved off as soon as they’d reached Orzammar.

Alistair stiffened, then straightened from his place by their packs of supplies. Zevran turned his head to follow the Grey Warden’s eyes. “Not darkspawn.” Well, that was reassuring. “Grey Warden. Another Calling. I think it’s Theron.” Not reassuring. Still, it would be good to see Theron again.

Theron Mahariel, small and Dalish, moved stiffly down the passage to join them. “Aneth ara!” he said before being swept up into Alistair’s armored bear hug, and Zevran’s less armored, but no less emotional arms. Zevran had envisioned both of these men as his lovers. It was not fated to be. He was satisfied to have been their friend.

Maker and Andraste, but Theron looked old, worn. The brown, Dalish braids were beyond streaked with grey. Like Alistair, his skin was covered with black splotches, possibly more than on the older Warden. On his last visit, Theron had told them, “It’s to be expected. I had the Blight sickness. I was tainted, and the only way to save me was to make me a Grey Warden. I thought I’d get my Calling before Alistair for that reason.”

Zevran watched the two of them chattering as Alistair dished out the stew Zevran had made from the dried fish, mushrooms, and their collection of root vegetables. They were using wooden bowls and spoons that would be burned before Zevran returned home. Every precaution that Alistair could think of was in place. Zev had his own separate eating ware to prevent contagion. Theron reached for his bowl with a smile. Neither of his friends moved freely. They both looked old. Tired and in pain. It occurred to Zevran that he was older than either of them. Theron had been so young when they’d met; Alistair not quite so young, but naive. 

It was possible that they’d fall tomorrow. Or the next day. Alistair had spoken to the Commander of the Legion of the Dead about clearing out some filthy potholes far down the Deep Roads. With more traffic to Kal-Sharok every day, there was concern about the appearance of some very tough genlock archers. Zevran knew that on the day they left him, his heart would break. He would see their bodies burnt with the proper rites. And then he would return to Denerim. To his children. To Anora. To home.

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the first chapters I wrote for the alphabet, and the idea might have given me a push toward putting this in alphabet form.
> 
> I love original Zevran. Not so much the Zevran in Dragon Age II, although I was happy to see him, of course. And one of the nifty things was to see the aspects of him through other peoples' eyes as I became involved in writing and reading fan-fiction. 
> 
> Ditto with Alistair, who is just too sweet and adorable. Zevran balances him out, I think, as friends.


End file.
